BACKGROUND In recent years, MR images have been increasingly used in therapeutic applications such as image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT). However, images with low contrast values and noises present challenges for image segmentation. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to develop a robust method based on fuzzy C-means (FCM) method which can segment MR images polluted with Gaussian noise. ...

In recent year, Deformable Image Registration (DIR) has become commercially available in the field of radiotherapy. DIR is an exciting and interesting technology for multi-modality image fusion, anatomic image segmentation, Four-dimensional (4D) dose accumulation and lung functional (ventilation) imaging. Furthermore, DIR is playing an important role in modern radiotherapy included Image-Guided...

Prostate cancer (CaP) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in males. There have been dramatic technical advances in radiotherapy delivery, enabling higher doses of radiotherapy to primary cancer, involved lymph nodes and oligometastases with acceptable normal tissue toxicity. Despite this, many patients relapse following primary radical therapy, and novel treatment approaches are required. Met...

Radiotherapy has a well-established role in the management of head and neck cancers. Over the past decade, a variety of new imaging modalities have been incorporated into the radiotherapy planning and delivery process. These technologies are collectively referred to as image-guided radiotherapy and may lead to significant gains in tumor control and radiation side effect profiles. In the followi...

Nowadays only digital figures are accepted by the most important journals of taxonomy. These may be produced by scanning conventional drawings, made with high precision technical ink-pens, which normally use capillary cartridge and various line widths. Digital drawing techniques that use vector graphics, have already been described in literature to support scientists in drawing figures and plat...

We report on a two-phase test performed to assess the ability of the ultrasound-based B-mode acquisition and targeting (BAT) trans-abdominal system to identify non-dedicated fiducial markers implanted into the prostate gland for subsequent image-guided radiotherapy.Although further investigation is warranted in order to identify the optimal echogenic marker and to define its potential use for i...

During most of the last century, verification of patient position on the radiotherapy treatment table was considered adequate if exposed on a photographic film by a megavoltage beam. It was a general standard to expose such a film once a week, to be approved by a radiation oncologist. The latter approved it after comparison to a kilovoltage simulation film exposed at the time of initial setup o...

We propose a new markerless tracking technique of lung tumor motion by using an X-ray fluoroscopic image sequence for real-time image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). A core innovation of the new technique is to extract a moving tumor intensity component from the fluoroscopic image intensity. The fluoroscopic intensity is the superimposition of intensity components of all the structures passed ...

PURPOSE To evaluate the impact of transabdominal probe pressure on prostate positioning with an intramodality ultrasound (US) image-guided-radiotherapy system and to quantify pressure variability over the treatment course. MATERIAL AND METHODS 8 prostate cancer patients (group A) and 17 healthy volunteers underwent 3 consecutive US images with increasing probe pressure levels, and 1 CT acquis...